The Warning
All in a grim instant he saw the trap.It closed upon his consciousness with a click, and as he doubled Satan around he knew that the only escape was in running southeast along the banks of the Asper.Even that was a desperate, a forlorn chance, for if that omnipotent voice could reach from Rickett to Caswell City, fifty miles away, certainly it must have warned the river towns of Ganton and Wilsonville and Bly Falls where Tucker Creek ran into the Asper.But this was no time for thinking.Already, looking back, he saw the posse changing their saddles to fifteen fresh mounts, and he headed Satan across the Wago Hills, West and South.
It was hot work.Even the steel-wire muscles of Black Bart were weakening under the tremendous labors of that day, and as he scouted ahead his head was low and his red tongue lolled, and surest sign of all, the bushy tail drooped; yet it was time to make a new call upon both wolf-dog and horse, for the posse was racing after him as before, giving even the fresh, willing mounts the urge of spurs and quirts.He ran his hand down the dripping neck and shoulder of Satan; he called to him; and with a snort the stallion responded.He felt the quiver as the muscles tightened for the work; he felt the settling as Satan lengthened to racing speed.
Through the Wago Hills, then, with Bart picking the way as before, and never a falter in the sweep of Satan's running.If his head was a little lower, if his ears lay flat, only the master knew the meaning, and still, when he spoke, the glistening ears pricked up, and they bounded on to a greater speed than before.The flight of a gull on unstirring wings when the wind buoys it, the glide of water over the descent of smooth rock, with never a ripple, like all things effortless, swift, and free, such was the gait of Satan as he fled.Let them spur the fresh horses from Caswell City till their flanks dripped red, they would never gain on him.
On through the hills, and now the heave of his great breaths told of the strain, down like an arrow into the rolling ground, and now they galloped beside the Asper banks.The master looked darkly upon that water.
Ten days before, when the snows had not yet reached the climax of melting, ten days later when that climax was overpassed, the Asper would have been fordable, but now a brown flood stormed along the gully, ate away the banks, undermined the willows here and there, and rolled stones larger than a man could lift.It went with an angry shouting as if it defied the fugitive.It was narrow, maddeningly narrow, almost small enough to attempt a leap across to the safety of the thickets on the farther side, but the force of the water alone was enough to warn the bravest swimmer away, and here and there, like teeth in the mouth of the shark, jagged stones cut the surface with white foam streaking out below them; as if to prove its power, even while Dan turned South along the bank a dead trunk shot down the stream and split on one of the Asper's teeth.
Even then he felt the temptation.There lay the forest on the farther side, a forest which would shelter him, and above the forest, hardly a mile back, began the Grizzly Peaks.They lunged straight up to snowy summits, and all along their sides blue shadows of the afternoon drifted through a network of ravines--a promise of peace, a surety of safety if he could reach that labyrinth.
He was almost glad when he left the mockery of the river's noise to turn aside for Ganton.There it lay in a bend of the Asper in the low-lands, and every town where men lived was an enemy.He could see them now gathered just outside the village, twenty men, perhaps and fifteen spare horses, the best they had, for the posse.
On past Ganton, and again a call upon Satan to meet the first spurt of the posse on its new horses.There was something in the stallion to answer, some incredible reserve of nerve strength and courage.There was a slight labor, now, and something of the same heave and pitch which comes in the gait of a common horse; also, when he put Satan up the first slope beyond Ganton he noted a faltering, a deeper lowering of the head.When his hoofs struck a loose rock he no longer had the easy recoil of the morning.He staggered like a graceful yacht chopped by a cross-current.Now down the slope, now back to the roar of the Asper once more, for there the going was most level, but always the strides were shortening, shortening, and the head of the stallion nodded at his work.
